Analyzing A New Material That Promises Faster, Higher Resolution Displays

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A new material is set to provide us with faster and higher resolution displays. Hokkaido University researchers explain what makes this material so special, opening the door to its application and further development.

All displays consist of a lattice of tiny dots of light, called pixels, the brightness of which can be individually controlled. The total number of pixels-and therefore, the resolution and display size-is limited by how many of these pixels can be addressed within a given fraction of a second. Therefore, display manufacturers try, in the pixel control units, to use materials that exhibit a very high "electron mobility," which is a measure for how quickly current will start to flow through a control unit as a response to voltage being applied-and thus, how quick the pixel is.

A new material called ITZO (for its constituent elements indium, tin, zinc and oxygen) promises to be up to seven times faster than the current state-of-the-art material. However, it has not been clear where this improvement comes from, hampering its adoption for industrial applications.

Hokkaido University material scientist Hiromichi Ohta and his team used their unique measurement technique to clarify this point. In their recent paper published in the journal ACS Applied Electronic Materials, they showed that the higher electron mobility results from the unusual fact that in ITZO films of sufficient thickness, free charges accumulate at the interface with the carrier material and thus enable passing-through electrons to travel through the bulk of the material unhindered.

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